A Traitor to Memory

The sound of that strain and the comprehension that accompanied it explained so much to me about my father: his focus on me throughout my childhood, his determination that I should have and see and be and experience the very best, his single-minded protection of me when I began my public career, his wariness of anyone who came too close and might do me harm. Having lost one child—no, my God, having lost two because Virginia his oldest had died young as well—he was not about to lose another.

So I finally understand why he's stayed so close, been so involved, finessed so much of my life and career. Early on I said aloud what I wanted—the violin, my music—and he did what it took to see to it that his remaining child was given just that, as if by providing me the means to my dream he would somehow assure my longevity. So he had two jobs; he sent Mother out to work as well; he employed Raphael; he arranged that I should be educated at home.

Except all this was before Sonia, wasn't it? It couldn't have been the result of Sonia's death. Because if, as he said, she was born when I was six years old, Raphael Robson and Sarah-Jane Beckett would already have been in place in the house. And James the Lodger would have been there as well. And into this already established group Katja Wolff would have come as Sonia's nanny. So that's what must have happened, isn't it: An established group was forced to accept an interloper in their midst. An intruder, if you will. A foreigner as well. And not just any, but a German foreigner. Briefly famous, yes. But German all the same: our wartime enemy and Granddad forever a prisoner of that war.

So Sarah-Jane Beckett and James the Lodger are whispering about her in that corner in the kitchen, not about my mother, not about Raphael, and not about those flowers. They are whispering about her because Sarah-Jane is like that, was like that from the first, a whisperer. Her whispering grows out of jealousy because Katja is lithe and pretty and seductive and Sarah-Jane Beckett—with her short red hair like a pudding bowl sprouting from her scalp and her body not much different to mine—sees how the men in the household look at Katja, especially James the Lodger, who helps Katja with her English and laughs when she says with a shiver, “Mein Gott, my corpse is not yet used to such rain in this country” instead of my body, which is what she means. She's asked if she would like a cup of tea, and she says, “Oh yes. Most voluntarily and with many gratitudes,” and they laugh the men laugh but it's laughter that's charmed. My father, Raphael, James the Lodger, even Granddad.

And I remember that. Dr. Rose, I remember.

22 September





So where has she been all these years, Katja Wolff? Buried with Sonia? Buried because of Sonia perhaps?

Because of Sonia? You pounce upon the word, don't you? Why because, Gideon?

Because of her death. If Katja was Sonia's nanny and Sonia died when she was two years old, Katja would have left us then, wouldn't she? I would have had no need for a nanny with Raphael and Sarah-Jane attending to me. So Katja would have left us after two years—perhaps even less—and that would be why I'd forgotten her. I was, after all, only eight at the time, and she wasn't my nanny but Sonia's, so I would have had little to do with her. I was consumed with my music, and when the violin wasn't devouring my time, my school lessons were. I'd already had my first public performances, and the fallout from them was an offer to study at Juilliard for a year. Imagine that. Juilliard. What age could I have been: seven? eight?

“A virtuoso in the making,” I was called.

But I didn't want making. I wanted made.

23 September





I don't go to Juilliard as things turn out, despite the honour and what it can mean to my development as an international musician. Because of the history of the place, scores of people three times my age would have done anything to have the same opportunity, to experience the endless possibilities that could come from having this extraordinary transcendent invaluable experience…. But there is no money, and even if there were, I am far too young to go that distance by myself, let alone to live there. And since my family cannot move there en masse, the opportunity passes me by.

En masse. Yes. I somehow know that en masse is the only way Juilliard will happen to me, money or not. So I say, Please please let me go, Dad, I must go, I want to go to New York because even then I know what it means in my present and can mean to my future. Dad says, Gideon, you know we can't go. You can't be there alone, and we can't go as a group. Naturally, I demand to know why. Why why why can't I have what I want when until this moment I have always had it. He says—and yes, I remember this well—Gideon, the world will come to you. I promise you that, I swear it, son.

But it's clear that we can't go to New York.